12 Comments

Were I to name the writing, I might say "She Found So Many Things."

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Personally I like everything by Tad Williams ... currently reading The Witchwood Crown because I had somehow missed the continuation of the Osten Ard series. Also loved his Otherland series... for a totally different genre: John Sanford ...I've read all his books and waiting impatiently for his latest one to get to my library ...

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Oh, I haven’t read Tad Williams in years — I should check out what’s new! Thanks for the tips :)

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To go in a different direction, I'll recommend the Fables graphic novels by Bill Willingham. Also, The Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew (only for D&D players).

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Both are indeed excellent!!

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I like Malcolm Galdwell; just finished reading The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. I especially liked Outliers because of the depth of research and how personal stories served to humanize well known people. I learned that I was born 10 years too late and on the wrong U.S. coast to have any shot at being a tech billionaire.

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If I were to rename your writing it would be Eleanor's Eclectic Adversaria

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When you were talking about the struggles with newsletter names I was reminded of a piece I stumbled on recently. I had never heard of this Lenny guy before but apparently he has one of the top five newsletters on Substack. He kinda whipped my ass into shape by saying only two things mattered in getting where he has: quality and consistency. I don’t want to try to summarize the whole thing but it really refocused me. https://open.substack.com/pub/lenny/p/500000

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Hehe yeah I read that one. He's right in a lot of ways, I think, but also setting yourself up to take advantage of lucky breaks is also a useful skill...

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Agreed. Luck is highly under recognized.

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You may already know nostalgebrist, since ACX has linked to him on AI at least once (he's vaguely connected with LessWrong), but he is writing some great fiction that is probably totally unsellable (in part because it's hard to briefly explain). The Northern Caves is his shortest work, and maybe easiest to get into. Its official summary is "An online message board devoted to a cult fantasy author wrestles with his baffling final book." which is rather like summarizing Pale Fire as "A colleague prepares a murdered poet's final, incomplete work for publication."

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I generally avoid the AI doomerism and alignment stuff, so I hadn't come across him before. I'll check it out, thanks!

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